Flying Dutchman

[Gravman]

Since the price of LEGO has gone up so much we decided to see how a knockoff would work. I have heard both good and bad about this kit but you can’t beat the price. Something that may indicate problems ahead is that a hammer is included with the kit. Yikes!

 

[mike25]

The prices of Lego sets are getting higher and higher, and I sometimes look at knockoffs, but I never buy any. I look forward to your updates.

 

[Gravman]

Same with us. Never thought I’d be ok with a knockoff. We hope to start on it tonight. We are going to build the stand first rather than last. I forgot to show the dimensions.

 

[Gravman]

We built the stand first. The parts are in bag 12. There are several #12’s. The main floor plates are in a separate bag with the masts. There are 334 parts to the stand which took us a couple of hours to assemble. The fit was good but you could tell the it was not Lego. The click was loud in spots. There were no missing parts but there were some finger prints on the flat pieces. You don’t see that on Lego. The coloring in the gold parts was streaky in spots. The brown color of the parts on the instructions makes it a bit challenging to determine where they should go. This might be caused by our old eyesight.

 

[Gravman]

We got the hull partially done. No missing parts so far.

 

[Gravman]

Decks are on and this finished bags number 1. There are about 348 parts in the bags. Fit is good and no parts missing so far. Took about 3 hours to finish this part. Be careful with the deck plates. Had to redo them once.

 

[Gravman]

When you get to bag 3 you are going to find the drawings a bit difficult to understand. We had to remove the bow 3 times before we got it correct. If anyone can do it on the first try my hat is off to you. We had to just walk away a couple of times.

There are 320 parts in this section. We worked on it for almost 4 hours.

 

[Gravman]

Sorry for the delay. Old folks and health problems go hand in hand. Anyway we spent about 2.5 hours on bag 3 components. We found our first missing pieces. We had a couple of extra 2 stud strips so we used those. The missing parts were 3 stud but the 2’s will work.

I don’t know why these photos are upside down. I reloaded them 3 times but no luck. They are right side up in my photos. Who knows?

 

[Gravman]

There are 14 canons with carriages on the main deck. Each one has 15 parts.

 

[Gravman]

Finished bag 4 today. There are parts that are combined to make a part. Lego would have used a single piece. Not really an issue but they are small.

 

[Gravman]

Bag 5 finished at last! This was a real challenge. Make absolutely sure that you do step 1 of bag 5 correctly. You won’t find out you made a mistake until several steps down the road. We had to take it apart and fix it. Not fun I can tell you. All the parts being dark brown does not help.

We had to modify a couple of the parts because they needed a thru hole. They were the only ones left so it was time to break out the Dremel.

 

[Gravman]

The modified parts go under the cap rail

 

[Gravman]

Bag 6 will start the stern gallery.

 

[Gravman]

You really gotta look hard at the instructions because it easy to get turned around.

 

[Gravman]

Having come this far I can say that for the price this kit is worth the money. I would not recommend it for a first time kit. There maybe other issues down the road but we have had some fun building the Flying Dutchman.

 

[Gravman]

We finished bag 6 and it turned out to be pretty easy compared to the others.

Unfortunately I have had to take a few days off due to a health issue. Just old folks stuff.

I wonder what they intended you to do with the opening hatch and the clear glass door.

 

[Gravman]

Ok we are back to working on the Dutchman. Finished bag 7. The stern gallery is coming along.